The Nabob, Volume 1 | Page 7

on the stage model, we see what a gain it was to him to have before his eyes the Paris stage of the Second Empire, instead of that of London in the earlier Victorian time." Where Dickens emulated the farces and the melodramas of forgotten British playwrights, Daudet was influenced rather by the virile dramas of Dumas fils and Augier. But in "Fromont and Risler," not only is the plot a trifle stagy, but the heroine herself seems almost a refugee of the footlights; exquisitely presented as Sidonie is, she fails quite to captivate or convince, perhaps because her sisters have been seen so often before in this play and in that. And now and again even in his later novels we discover that Daudet has needlessly achieved the adroit arrangement of events so useful in the theatre and not requisite in the library. In "The Nabob," for example, it is the "long arm of coincidence" that brings Paul de G��ry to the inn on the Riviera, and to the very next room therein at the exact moment when Jenkins catches up with the fleeing F��licia.
Yet these lapses into the arbitrary are infrequent after all; and as "Fromont and Risler" was followed first by one and then by another novel, the evil influence of theatrical conventionalism disappears. Daudet occasionally permits himself an underplot; but he acts always on the principle he once formulated to his son: "every book is an organism; if it has not its organs in place, it dies, and its corpse is a scandal." Sometimes, as in "Fromont and Risler," he starts at the moment when the plot thickens, returning soon to make clear the antecedents of the characters first shown in action; and sometimes, as in "Sapho," he begins right at the beginning and goes straight through to the end. But, whatever his method, there is never any doubt as to the theme; and the essential unity is always apparent. This severity of design in no way limits the variety of the successive acts of his drama.
While a novel of Balzac's is often no more than an analysis of character, and while a novel of Zola's is a massive epic of human endeavor, a novel of Daudet's is a gallery of pictures, brushed in with the sweep and certainty of a master-hand,--portraits, landscapes with figures, marines, battlepieces pieces, bits of genre, views of Paris. And the views of Paris outnumber the others, and almost outvalue them also. Mr. Henry James has noted that "The Nabob" is "full of episodes which are above all pages of execution, triumphs of translation. The author has drawn up a list of the Parisian solemnities, and painted the portrait, or given a summary, of each of them. The opening day at the Salon, a funeral at P��re la Chaise, a debate in the Chamber of Deputies, the premi��re of a new play at a favorite theatre, furnish him with so many opportunities for his gymnastics of observation." And "The Nabob" is only a little more richly decorated than the "Immortal," and "Numa Roumestan," and "Kings in Exile."
These pictures, these carefully wrought masterpieces of rendering are not lugged in, each for its own sake; they are not outside of the narrative; they are actually part of the substance of the story. Daudet excels in describing, and every artist is prone to abound in the sense of his superiority. As the French saying puts it, a man has always the defects of his qualities; yet Daudet rarely obtrudes his descriptions, and he generally uses them to explain character and to set off or bring out the moods of his personages. They are so swift that I am tempted to call them flash-lights; but photographic is just what they are not, for they are artistic in their vigorous suppression of the unessentials; they are never gray or cold or hard; they vibrate with color and tingle with emotion.
And just as a painter keeps filling his sketch-books with graphic hints for elaboration later, so Daudet was indefatigable in note-taking. He explains his method in his paper of "Fromont and Risler;" how he had for a score of years made a practice of jotting down in little note-books not only his remarks and his thoughts, but also a rapid record of what he had heard with his ears ever on the alert, and what he had seen with those tireless eyes of his. Yet he never let the dust of these note-books choke the life out of him. Every one of his novels was founded on fact,--plot, incidents, characters and scenery.
He used his imagination to help him to see; he used it also to peer into and behind the mere facts. All that he needed to invent was a connecting link now and again; and it